Swiggy lays off hundreds of employees; shuts down Meat Marketplace

Food and grocery delivery platform Swiggy has fired more than 300 employees of its 6,000-strong workforce as part of a "restructuring exercise", according to an internal e-mail shared by Sriharsha Majety, Swiggy’s chief executive and co-founder, on Friday.

"As part of a reorganisation effort, we've made the extremely tough choice to reduce the size of our workforce. We will be saying farewell to 380 talented Swiggsters during this process. After considering all of the options, we came to this extraordinarily tough conclusion," Majety stated.

Macroeconomic challenges and the slowing expansion of the food delivery industry were highlighted by the head of the delivery platform as the causes of these layoffs.

He continued, "Our overhiring is an instance of bad judgement, and I should've done better here. While our cash reserves allow us to be fundamentally well positioned to weather hard times, we cannot make this a crutch and must continue uncovering efficiencies to secure our long-term."

As a cost-cutting strategy, the company also plans to close down some verticals, according to Majety's email. "We will shortly be closing our meat market," the statement read. Despite the team's outstanding performance and excellent contributions, we haven't yet achieved product-market fit in this case. From the perspective of the customer, we will still send meat via Instamart, he said.

Depending on the tenure of the service with the company, the food delivery platform will offer the fired employees a minimum compensation of three months or a notice period that can be extended by at least 15 days.